When the idea arose of taking a quick pause from our music coverage to review one of the many films being featured at South by Southwest (SXSW), we immediately contacted the publicity department at Magnolia Pictures to track down whatever sick, twisted and depraved geniuses were behind “Hobo with a Shotgun.”
The concept for “Hobo” is both straightforward and enticing: a technicolor saturated, balls-to-the-wall homage to the B movie/exploitation genre films of the 60s, 70s and 80s. In a city where the system is broken, the police corrupt and the majority of citizens too scared to stand up to the violence that befalls them, the city’s last hope will become a hobo (veteran baddie Rutger Hauer) armed with nothing but a sense of decency, a 12-gauge shotgun and the love of a fallen woman, battling masked thugs, pedophile Santas and armor-clad bounty hunters in a fight to the death for both the city and his own soul. As a fan of the genre, they had me at “Hobo.” Or maybe “shotgun.” Either way, nothing was going to stop us from seeing this movie.
As it turned out, “Hobo” was spearheaded by a young Canadian director named Jason Eisener and his producing partner, Rob Coterill. A short version of “Hobo” won an international trailer competition held by Robert Rodriguez and was featured in the original release of his and Quentin Tarantino’s ill-fated (but irrefutably awesome) double feature “Grindhouse.” I had also been a fan of another short they made for the Internet, the hilarious “Treevenge,” wherein a family of Christmas trees wreak bloody and brutal revenge on their human oppressors. Using the hype that their short films created on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, Eisener and Coterill cleverly leveraged finance from private investors and the Canadian government to produce the concept as a feature. The film has resultantly enjoyed resounding success in the festival circuit — including a prominent feature at Sundance in Park City — and has also accrued a massive Internet following for its VOD release on April 1.
We caught up with Eisener and Coterill at an Austin hotel to talk about “Hobo” and exploitation film in general. And, as it turned out, that’s what they were going for.
“They took the cheapest technology and most accessible technology they could afford,” Coterill said, “and we did the same thing. We’re in a new time, but we took advantage of the tools we had and we could exploit to get as far as we could, as fast as we could. We made this movie like they made their movies: running around the streets like mad, stealing locations, do everything we could…to make the movie what it had to be.”
“‘Hobo’ very much comes from that,” Eisener said. “It all started from us putting the trailer on YouTube, and the reaction we were getting from the audience. The mindset going into the movie was: how can we exploit that audience? Let’s make, kind of, a YouTube exploitation film. How can we make a movie — every scene in the movie — in a way where, if just one scene leaked online, would hopefully go viral?”
We saw a screening that night; not only did his film fulfill its promise of high violence and cheap laughs, but we were surprised to the degree that every aspect of the movie — every actor, every gag, every homage — went all out in the name of fun. Great gore, incredible one-liners, awesome music and a great look; “Hobo” turned out to be a masterful weaving of genre properties; of action, comedy and, to our surprise, a few moments of straight drama — and managed to do all of this, somehow, without forgetting the basic rule that every movie has to wrap a good plot around great characters if it is to be really enjoyed. While “Hobo” certainly doesn’t carry any discernable social message, it reminds us without preaching that not every movie needs to. Don’t ask me how Jason Eisener got me to care so deeply about a hobo with a shotgun. I don’t know. If I did, I’d be Jason Eisener. All I say is it’s the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater since “Grindhouse.” “Hobo” simply rocked.
We were lucky enough to catch up with Eisener the next night at a Wu Tang Clan concert. We talked about the film, and he explained his motto, “more blood, more heart.” Looking through the press kit for a shot of Rutger (who was in Africa during SXSW), I stumbled on its origin. Apparently, in pre-production, Jason affixed a sign to the back of his office desktop as a memo to the whole shoot crew: “More Blood, More Nasty, More Dirt, More Exploitation, More Heart, Your (sic) Awesome and Have More Fun. Love Jason Eisener.” Maybe I misspoke, as it seems safe to say the young director’s secret is to simply drive all the people working with him to rock out as hard as they humanly can, and the collective result is almost tangible. Working as an assistant director in New York, I’ve encountered a number of smart young directors in my past, each with their own complicated and philosophy-laden manifestos as to why the do what they do. But, as far as these go, “more blood, more heart” is the best I’ve heard yet.
— Thelonious Kwinter Brooks